An anonymous chain email circulating through the Internet falsely claims that presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) “was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, calls the accusation intended to promote a “Manchurian Candidate-style conspiracy theory” about Obama’s birth, his religion, and his citizenship. The email accurately notes that Obama’s father was African and born a Muslim (see January 11, 2008). Obama’s stepfather was Indonesian and raised as a Muslim. However, PolitiFact notes, both men were not religiously observant (Obama has described his father as a practicing atheist). Obama’s American mother was agnostic at best. Obama has said that he grew up with virtually no religious traditions. He has been a practicing Christian for decades (see January 6-11, 2008). “Madrassa” is an Arabic word for “school,” but Americans generally understand the word to mean a school where anti-Western Islamic ideology is taught. The email falsely claims that Obama attended a “madrassa” that engaged in a “RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.” PolitiFact notes: “Westerners typically understand Wahabism to be an austere form of Islam based on a literal reading of the Koran. So is that the type of school Obama attended?” Obama attended a secular public school in Indonesia; a press investigation found the school to be “so progressive that teachers wore miniskirts and all students were encouraged to celebrate Christmas.” The school has never taught Wahabism or any other form of “fringe” Islam. News reports accurately indicate that Obama’s school registration form lists Obama’s religion as “Muslim,” but the form has several other errors, and, PolitiFact notes, “it seems reasonable to assume that he was registered as Muslim simply because his stepfather was Muslim.” Obama also attended a Catholic school in Indonesia for several years. PolitiFact concludes that the email is “a wholesale invention designed to frighten voters.” [St. Petersburg Times, 10/1/2007]

An anonymous chain email circulates throughout the Internet claiming that newly elected President Barack Obama took the oath of office for his former position as a US senator on a Koran, the holy book of Islam, and not a Christian Bible. Obama is a Christian (see January 6-11, 2008), though many of his opponents have insisted that he is a “covert Muslim” or Islamist radical (see April 18, 2008). The email misspells the name as “Kuran,” though it is either spelled Koran or Qu’ran. Two press reports from January 2005 confirm that when Obama was sworn into office as the junior senator from Illinois, he took the oath on his family Bible. The Obama presidential campaign has confirmed that Obama used his family Bible. Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as president of the Senate, administered the oath. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, concludes: “We suspect this false claim was inspired by the 2007 swearing-in of Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), an American convert to Islam and the first Muslim elected to Congress. Ellison used a Koran that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, borrowing the rare book from the Library of Congress. It goes without saying that Ellison is not Obama. And with its intent to inflame, we find the email’s allegation not only false, but pants-on-fire wrong.” [St. Petersburg Times, 12/19/2007]

PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, debunks Internet claims that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, is a covert Muslim whose middle name is Mohammed. The claims appear to be sourced from anonymous emails circulating throughout right-wing blogs and organizations. PolitiFact writes: “First off, Barack Obama’s middle name is not Mohammed; it’s Hussein. He was named after his father, a Kenyan who came to the United States from Africa as a student.” PolitiFact also verifies that Obama is not a Muslim, “covert” or otherwise. Obama is a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (see January 6-11, 2008). PolitiFact notes that the emails contradict themselves, on the one hand making the claim that Obama is a Muslim and on the other attacking his membership in Trinity United. Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs has said, “To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.” [St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008] PolitiFact does further investigation and again debunks the claims months later (see April 18, 2008). PolitiFact has already debunked earlier claims that in 2005, Obama took his Senate oath of office on a Koran, when in reality he used his family Bible (see December 19, 2007).

A recent spate of chain email attacks on presidential contender Barack Obama (D-IL) include claims that Obama may be the Antichrist of Biblical prediction. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, notes that the email entirely distorts the words of the Book of Revelation to make its claim. The email reads: “According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.… the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything is it OBAMA??… I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet… do it! If you think I am crazy… Im sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the ‘unknown’ candidate.” PolitiFact notes that there are at least 635,000 hits on Google for the search term “Obama + Antichrist,” indicating that the subject has a certain interest to many. There are also literally thousands of blog posts about “Barack Obama the Antichrist” and such. PolitiFact states flatly, “Nothing about this detailed allegation is true.” According to PolitiFact’s research, which includes interviews with two religious scholars, the email makes a number of egregious errors. The email misstates the name of the “Book of Revelation” as “Revelations.” The email falsely says that the Book of Revelation uses the term “anti-christ” or any such term. Religious studies professor Dr. James D. Tabor tells PolitiFact: “The word Antichrist is not used in the Book of Revelation so this is important to point out. Everybody thinks the word is used.” Dr. L. Michael White, a professor of classics and religious studies, adds, “First and foremost, the word Antichrist and a figure called the Antichrist never occurs in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.” There are characters in Revelation that some interpret as being the Antichrist, particularly one beastly figure in Chapter 13 “having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy” that some consider to be an allusion to the Antichrist. “It’s only in Chapter 13 and you could almost miss it,” Tabor says. White notes that most Biblical scholars do not consider that figure to represent the Antichrist. “It wasn’t there in the Bible,” he says. “It emerges in the Middle Ages. It’s something historians deal with.” The term does appear a few times in other books of the Bible, specifically First John and Second John. The Bible does not identify the Antichrist as a man of any particular age. Nowhere does it describe “a man, in his 40s,” as the e-mail alleges. “As you notice, there’s nothing about being age 40,” Tabor says. “This is completely wrong. The Book of Revelation doesn’t say that. It says it’s a male, so I guess they got that right. It says ‘he,’ ‘he,’ ‘he.’” The Bible does not identify the Antichrist as being Muslim; Islam was not founded as a religion until 400 years after the completion of the various books of the Bible. “A Muslim would be a monotheist and the last thing a Muslim would do is have anyone worship anyone other than God,” says Tabor. And Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, and January 11, 2008). According to White, the email lifts much of its information from the Left Behind series, a group of post-apocalyptic novels written by Christian-right preacher Tim LaHaye and his co-author, Jerry Jenkins. The email is, White says, “a jigsaw puzzle of bits and pieces all filtered through the kind of end-of-world scenarios we get in the theology that is the underpinning of the Left Behind novels.” He says this kind of “patchwork interpretation of the Bible” is used by groups who wish to justify certain beliefs. “Of course, they never bothered to read the Scriptures carefully,” he says, “so it’s kind of a system of interpretation. That if you start with that presupposition… it’s all there you can just find it.… That description [in the chain email] never occurs anywhere in one place nor are the component parts really about the same situation. It’s a cherry-picking through Scripture to get it all to fit together.” PolitiFact calls the email’s claim “egregiously inaccurate.” [St. Petersburg Times, 3/19/2008]

A portion of Barack Obama’s marriage certificate. The full-size original can be viewed online. [Source: St. Petersburg Times]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, debunks a recent spate of claims that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, has ties to Islamist radicals in Kenya. The claims appear to be sourced from a letter sent by American missionaries in Kenya, saying that Obama has ties to a Kenyan opposition party and warning its readers “not to be taken in by those that are promoting him.” The email also claims: “By the way. His true name is Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama. Won’t that sound sweet to our enemies as they swear him in on the Koran! God bless you.” PolitiFact writes: “The e-mail reads like a bad game of ‘telephone,’ its claims drawn from assorted people and sources that have been stitched together. And yet, because it is signed by real people, who have a life in Africa, it somehow carries more credence than your average blog posting—and it’s spreading rapidly.” PolitiFact has debunked this claim before (see January 11, 2008), but notes that the claim continues to spread. PolitiFact posts a copy of Obama’s 1992 marriage certificate, which states “Barack H. Obama” married “Michelle L. Robinson” on October 3, 1992, in a ceremony officiated by Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Jeremiah A. Wright (see January 6-11, 2008). Obama’s driver’s license record in Illinois identifies him as “Barack H. Obama.” His property listings name him as either “Barack Hussein Obama” or “Barack H. Obama.” His registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois notes that Obama was admitted to the Illinois bar on December 17, 1991, and has no public record of discipline. PolitiFact was unable to secure a copy of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). PolitiFact has located the originator of the email, Celeste Davis. Her husband Loren Davis confirms that he cannot substantiate the claims in the email. “That was what we heard there [in Kenya],” Davis tells a PolitiFact interviewer. Davis says he and his wife have lived and worked in Kenya for the past 12 years, and says his wife’s message was from a personal letter “never intended to be forwarded or sent out to the Web.” [St. Petersburg Times, 4/18/2008]

Obama’s birth certificate, obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: FightTheSmears (.com)]Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), running for the Democratic nomination for president, releases a digitally scanned copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. His campaign is responding to persistent rumors that he is not a legitimate American citizen. In the process of releasing the certificate, Obama’s campaign also launches a Web site called Fight The Smears, devoted to debunking the allegations that, among other things, Obama is not a citizen, he is a closet Muslim, he took his oaths for political office on a copy of the Koran, he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and other falsehoods. As Obama was born in Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, his birth certificate comes under Hawaiian state law, and those laws state birth certificates are not public records. Only the individuals, or immediate family members, may request copies. The copy of the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign confirms that his name is legitimately “Barack Hussein Obama,” not “Barack Muhammed Obama,” “Barry Soetoro,” or other claimed variants, and states that Obama’s mother is Stanley Ann Dunham, an American, and his father is Barack Hussein Obama, an “African.” The birth certificate release only inflames the “birther” claims that Obama is hiding his true citizenship, religion, political alliances, and other such personal facts (see June 27, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009; Honolulu Advertiser, 7/28/2009]

Logo for the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: Baby Guard Fence (.com)]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, publishes a scathing denunciation of so-called “birther” claims that presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is not a legitimate American citizen. The story has gained traction mostly through Internet blogs and emails circulating among far-right and “tea party” organizations and figures, making wildly varying claims—Obama is a Kenyan, he is a Muslim, his middle name is Mohammed, his birth name is “Barry Soetoro,” and so forth. PolitiFact’s Amy Hollyfield writes: “At full throttle, the accusations are explosive and unrelenting, the writers emboldened by the anonymity and reach of the Internet. And you can’t help but ask: How do you prove something to people who come to the facts believing, out of fear or hatred or maybe just partisanship, that they’re being tricked?” Hollyfield notes that PolitiFact has sought a valid copy of Obama’s birth certificate since the claims began circulating months ago. PolitiFact has already secured a copy of Obama’s 1992 marriage certificate from the Cook County, Illinois, Bureau of Vital Statistics, his driver’s license record from the Illinois secretary of state’s office, his registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and all of his property records. The records are consistent, all naming him as either “Barack H. Obama” or “Barack Hussein Obama,” his legitimate, given name. PolitiFact ran into trouble with the birth certificate. Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and according to Hawaiian law, that state’s birth certificates are not public record. Only family members can request copies. The Obama presidential campaign originally declined to provide PolitiFact with a copy, until the campaign released a true copy of the certificate (see June 13, 2008). When PolitiFact received the document, researchers emailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. Spokesman Janice Okubo responded, “It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate.” Instead of settling the controversy, the certificate inflamed the so-called “birthers,” who asked a number of questions concerning the certificate, including queries about and challenges to: the certificate’s seal and registrar’s signature; the color of the document as compared to other Hawaiian birth certificates; the date stamp of June 2007, which some say is “bleeding through the back of the document,” supposedly calling into question the validity of the stamp and, thusly, the entire certificate; the lack of creases from being folded and mailed; the authenticity of the document, which some claim is “clearly Photoshopped and a wholesale fraud.” Further investigation by PolitiFact researchers supports the validity of the certificate and disproves the allegations as cited. Hollyfield writes: “And soon enough, after going to every length possible to confirm the birth certificate’s authenticity, you start asking, what is reasonable here? Because if this document is forged, then they all are. If this document is forged, a US senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois secretary of state’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and many other government agencies.” Hollyfield notes that the Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen email inquiries a day about Obama’s birth certificate, according to Okubo. She tells Hollyfield: “I guess the big issue that’s being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature.” On a Hawaiian birth certificate, she says, the seal and signatures are on the back of the document. “Because they scanned the front… you wouldn’t see those things.” Hollyfield concludes that it is conceivable “that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible.” But she goes on to ask doubters “to look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over. There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact’s conclusion that the candidate’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn’t authentic. And that’s true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.” [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008]

A birth announcement from the August 13, 1961 Honululu Advertiser announcing the birth of a baby boy to the parents of Barack Obama. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]A blogger who supports Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for president over Democratic primary challenger Barack Obama (D-IL) finds a birth announcement from a copy of the August 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser announcing Obama’s birth. The blogger publishes a scanned graphic of the announcement on his blog, and concludes that Obama was “likely” born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu as the campaign, and the senator, have always claimed (see June 13, 2008). Reprinting the annoucement, FactCheck (.org) notes: “Of course, it’s distantly possible that Obama’s grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his US citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the USA.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008] Reporter Will Hoover for the Honolulu Advertiser notes that both the Advertiser and the Honolulu Star Bulletin published birth announcements for Obama. One of the announcements, the blogger notes, contains the actual address of Obama’s parents at the time they lived in Honolulu, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway. Newspaper officials tell Hoover that the announcements came, not from the parents, but from Hawaii’s Department of Health. “That’s not the kind of stuff a family member calls in and says, ‘Hey, can you put this in?’” Hoover explains. [What Really Happened (.com), 2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009]

A photograph of the actual Hawaiian birth certificate of Barack Obama, being held by FactCheck (.org) writer Joe Miller. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]FactCheck (.org), a non-partisan arm of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, certifies that its experts have verified that the birth certificate released by Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is valid (see June 13, 2008). Since the release of the digitally scanned image, a firestorm of controversy (see July 20, 2008) has erupted over the authenticity of the certificate, even after Hawaiian officials verified its validity (see June 27, 2008) and the discovery of a printed birth announcement from a Honolulu newspaper (see July 2008). FactCheck notes that much of the controversy has been sparked by author Jerome Corsi, whose recent book Obamanation makes a host of negative claims against Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), and who has told a Fox News interviewer that the birth certificate the campaign has is “fake” (see August 15, 2008). FactCheck releases the following statement: “We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined, and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving US citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as ‘supporting documents’ to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the USA just as he has always said.” The actual certificate is in the hands of Obama campaign officials in Chicago, FactCheck reports, and has the proper seals and signature from Hawaiian registrar Alvin Onaka. Certificate Meets Requirements for State Department Passport Issuance - FactCheck reports: “The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a US passport: ‘your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.’ The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above” in a photograph reproduced on FactCheck’s Web site. 'Short Form' Certificate - The copy possessed by the Obama campaign is called a “short form birth certificate.” The so-called “long form” is created by the hospital in which a child is born, and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents’ hometowns. The short form is what is provided by Hawaiian officials upon receiving a valid request for a birth certificate: It “is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department.” Scan Artifacts - The digitally scanned version released by the Obama campaign does indeed show “halos” around the black-text lettering, prompting some to claim that the text may have been copied onto an image of security paper. However, FactCheck writes, “the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.” Date Stamp, Blacked-Out Certificate Number - The digital scan also contains an unusual date stamp and a blacked-out certificate number. Campaign spokesperson Shauna Daly explains that the certificate is stamped July 2007 because that is when Hawaiian officials produced it for the presidential campaign. The campaign did not release a copy until mid-2008, leading some to speculate that the date stamp proved the digital scan was a forgery. Of the certificate number, Daly says that the campaign “couldn’t get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we’ve found out it’s pretty irrelevant for the outside world.” FactCheck writes, “The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.” 'African' Father - Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., is listed on the certificate as “African,” sparking claims that Obama is actually of Kenyan citizenship. Kurt Tsue of the Hawaii Department of Health tells FactCheck that the father and mother’s race are told to officials by the parents, and thusly “we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.” FactCheck writes: “We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama Sr. would have thought of and reported himself as ‘African.’ It’s certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.” Differences in Borders - The “security borders” on the digital scan do indeed look slightly different from other examples of Hawaii birth certificates. Tsue explains: “The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised.” He also confirms that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for “all reasonable purposes.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

Chicago resident Andy Martin, who has been accusing Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) of being a secret Muslim since 2004, abruptly shifts his story. Now, Martin claims, Obama is not the child of a Muslim father, Barack Obama Sr., as documents have clearly and repeatedly shown (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008), but the child of Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American activist who was suspected in the 1950s of having ties to Communist organizations. Martin’s accusations, though never supported by fact, have garnered a great deal of coverage in some corners of the Internet. Martin now tells a CNN reporter that Obama’s “father was Frank Marshall Davis.” He gives no proof, and implies he has nothing more than a gut feeling. Davis was a black poet and political activist who moved to Hawaii in 1948. He wrote for a newspaper which the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) accused of being a Communist front. Right-wing Web sites have been claiming since 2007 that Davis was not only a Communist Party member but also the mentor to Obama in his teen years who he refers to in his autobiography as “Frank.” Martin’s most recent burst of prominence was an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News broadcast, where he said that “Obama’s role as a community organizer [in Chicago] was a political staging ground perpetuated by the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers.” Martin also told Hannity that Obama “probably had met William Ayers in New York, and was coming here to lay the foundations for what he thought would be some sort of political movement.” An Obama presidency, Martin predicted, would lead to “a socialist revolution, which attempts to essentially freeze out anybody who’s not part of this radical ideology.” Martin readily admits that his current assertion about Obama’s parentage refutes his four-year-old claims that Obama is a Muslim. He calls himself “an honest writer and an honest researcher.… I’m known as a person who strives for the truth.” The fault is Obama’s, he says, because he “hasn’t told the truth to the American people.” [Raw Story, 10/27/2008] In a wide-ranging article about the “birther” controversy, Salon columnist Alex Koppelman will later note that Martin was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law. [Salon, 12/5/2008]

Hawaii’s Director of Health Dr. Chiyome Fukino says she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the Hawaii Department of Health holds Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s original birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008). Fukino says that she has “personally seen and verified that the Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” Fukino and Onaka thereby verify that Obama is, indeed, an American citizen. Fukino releases the statement in an attempt to stem the tide of conspiracy theories that assert Obama is not a US citizen—“birtherism”—and therefore cannot be eligible to be president. Fukino adds that no state official, including Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), ever issued instructions that Obama’s certificate be handled differently. Hawaii state law prohibits the release of the so-called “long form” birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest; state law says that the “short form” the state releases to its citizens, and that Obama has long ago made public (see June 13, 2008), is legal and valid in and of itself. State courts in Ohio, Pennsylvania (see August 21-24, 2008), and Washington State have recently dismissed court challenges to Obama’s citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008; Associated Press, 10/31/2008] Fukino tells a Honolulu reporter: “This has gotten ridiculous (see July 20, 2008). There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy.” Asked if this “[w]ill be enough to quiet the doubters,” Fukino responds: “I hope so. We need to get some work done.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

The non-partisan PolitiFact, an organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, again delves into the ever-widening controversy surrounding President Obama’s supposed lack of US citizenship. A year ago, the organization attempted to debunk the wildly varying claims that Obama is not a US citizen (see June 27, 2008). Since then, the number and nature of the various claims against Obama’s heritage and citizenship have continued to swell. PolitiFact examines one aspect of the controversy, the question about “long form” vs. “short form” birth certificates. According to PolitiFact researcher Robert Fairley, so-called “birthers” claim that Obama has never produced a valid “long form” birth certificate, only an easily faked “short form” certificate that is generated via a computer database in Honolulu, the city of Obama’s birth. In August 2008, researchers from FactCheck stated that they had verified the authenticity of a physical and true copy of the birth certificate, though the verification did little to stem the tide of claims and conspiracy theories. The “long form”—kept in state vaults by Hawaiian law—is the actual “birth certificate,” birthers claim; the “short form” is merely a “certification of live birth,” and, they say, useless for proving anyone’s actual status as a citizen. Many “birthers” believe that the “hidden” long form would prove Obama’s foreign birth, and claim that Hawaii’s refusal to release it (a violation of state law) is proof of Obama’s hidden heritage. Some claim that Hawaii does not accept a “certification of live birth” as proof that an individual was physically born in Hawaii, and point to a statement on the Web site of the Hawaii Department of Home Lands, which reads in part: “In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original certificate of live birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the certification of live birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original certificate of live birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated certification requires additional verification by DHHL.” DHHL spokesman Lloyd Yonenaka says the statement is somewhat misleading. In order to be eligible for Hawaii’s Home Lands program, an applicant must be able to prove that his ancestry is 50 percent native Hawaiian or indigeneous. Obama has never asserted that his ancestry is native Hawaiian. The DHHL Web site now states: “The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands accepts both certificates of live birth (original birth certificate) and certifications of live birth because they are official government records documenting an individual’s birth. The certificate of live birth generally has more information which is useful for genealogical purposes as compared to the certification of live birth which is a computer-generated printout that provides specific details of a person’s birth. Although original birth certificates (certificates of live birth) are preferred for their greater detail, the State Department of Health (DOH) no longer issues certificates of live birth. When a request is made for a copy of a birth certificate, the DOH issues a certification of live birth.” Janice Okubo of the Hawaii Department of Health says there is no real difference between the “long form” and “short form” for any useful purposes. The terms are “just words,” she says. Obama’s birth certificate as posted on the Internet (see June 13, 2008) “is considered a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. There’s only one form of birth certificate.” Hawaii has followed the same practice of keeping the “long form” on file and issuing copies of the “short form” since the 1960s, she says. The forms have changed somewhat in appearance over the ensuring decades, she notes, and says there are no doubt differences between certificates issued in, say 1961 and those issued now. “When you request a birth certificate, the one you get looks exactly like the one posted on his site,” she says. “That’s the birth certificate.” The so-called “short form” “certification of live birth” would show if Obama had been born in a foreign land, she says. The certificate states that he was born in Honolulu. [St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009]

Hawaii’s health director, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, releases a second statement that verifies President Obama was indeed born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, and therefore is a valid US citizen. Fukino is responding to persistent rumors that Obama is not a valid US citizen and therefore is ineligible to serve as president. The statement reads: “I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago.” Fukino released a similar statement before the 2008 presidential election (see October 30, 2008), which was derided by “birthers” who are convinced Obama is not a true American citizen. CNN’s Lou Dobbs has demanded to see Obama’s “long form” birth certificate, even though Hawaiian law states that all such documents remain under lock and key and are not publicly released; Dobbs continues to push the “birther” story on his nightly talk show, even though CNN’s US president Jon Klein has told Dobbs’s staffers that the issue is a “dead” story. Birthers dispute the fact that Obama was born in Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, despite the release of a verified copy of the certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, and August 21, 2008), court rulings, and statements by Fukino and Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI). [Honolulu Advertiser, 7/28/2009]

The press learns that in the final months of the 2008 presidential campaign, the McCain-Palin campaign investigated claims that then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) may not be a legitimate US citizen. The campaign investigation was spurred by reports of a court filing in Pennsylvania (see August 21-24, 2008). A lawyer contacted by the McCain-Palin campaign called the court filing “idiotic,” but the filing prompted the campaign to do some investigating of its own. Trevor Potter, a Washington attorney who served as general counsel to the 2008 McCain campaign, recalls: “We monitored the progress of these lawsuits against the Obama campaign. The McCain campaign faced a series of lawsuits like this, too, alleging that he could not be president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Both campaigns took the position that these plaintiffs lacked standing.” Potter and other McCain legal experts quickly ruled out any chance of those lawsuits holding up in court. They also investigated the claims underlying the lawsuits. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” Potter recalls. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health (see June 13, 2008), and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate (see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009). There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance” (see July 2008). [Washington Independent, 7/24/2009] McCain’s own citizenship has also been unsuccessfully challenged in court (see March 14 - July 24, 2008).

The cover of Klein and Elliott’s ‘The Manchurian President.’ [Source: Borders (.com)]The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters finds a number of dubious or outright false claims in a recent book by Aaron Klein entitled The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti-American Extremists. Klein is a reporter for the conservative news blog WorldNetDaily, which has taken a lead role in accusing President Obama of not being an American citizen (see December 5, 2008, May 28, 2009, and August 1-4, 2009). Among other disproven claims, Klein writes that “terrorist” William Ayers (see October 4-5, 2008) was the “ghostwriter” of Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father; Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga is Obama’s cousin (using the false relationship to try to link Obama with Odinga, whom Klein calls a “traitor” to Kenya); Obama supports “involuntary birth-control measures,” which Klein describes as “compulsory, government-mandated ‘green abortions’ [to] control population growth and prevent ecological disasters”; and Obama sought and received support from the socialist New Party in the early stages of his political career. Klein also attempts to portray the church that Obama attended as a child, the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, as a “staging ground” for his supposed “antiwar activism” and “socialism”; claims a number of ties between Obama and Communist “black activists”; and makes other claims. Klein also attempts to argue that “Obama may not be eligible to serve as president.” After admitting that there is “no convincing evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, nor that his birthplace was any place other than Hawaii, his declared state of birth,” Klein claims that because Obama’s father was not a US citizen, there should have been “Congressional debate about whether Obama is eligible under the United States Constitution to serve as president,” focusing on the legal definition of the constitutional requirement that the president be a “natural born citizen.” Klein ignores most accepted legal opinions on the subject, instead focusing on a 1758 treatise called The Law of Nations and an obscure Supreme Court decision, Minor v. Happersett. Both the treatise and the Court decision have been routinely cited by “birther” lawyers attempting to challenge Obama’s citizenship, Media Matters notes. [Media Matters, 5/7/2010] Reviews of the book are mixed. David Horowitz’s far-right publication Front Page Magazine calls the book a “meticulously documented piece of outstanding investigative research” that “blow[s] the lid off the dome of silence surrounding the Obama administration.” Klein and co-author Brenda J. Elliot “reveal surreptitious ties to radical leftists of all stripes,” the review states. [Front Page Magazine, 6/16/2010] Terry Krepel, the progressive founder of ConWebWatch, calls Klein’s entire book an exercise in “guilt by association,” using as one of several examples Obama’s attendance at the Honolulu church: Obama was a young boy at the time; the group that Ayers was a part of, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had splintered two years before Obama began attending church services; and Klein never shows any proof that what he calls “Ayers’s ideology” made it into the Sunday school curriculum. The book is entirely “dishonest,” Krepel concludes. [Huffington Post, 5/9/2010]

Donald Trump, addressing an audience at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference. [Source: Red Dog Report (.com)]Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump tells an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that President Obama “came out of nowhere,” and adds: “In fact, I’ll go a step further: the people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” Trump, who receives cheers for the statement, tells the assemblage that he is considering running for president in 2012 as a Republican. He is apparently trying to revive the so-called “birther” claims that Obama is not a valid American citizen (see (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010). In response, PolitiFact, a non-partisan political research organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, retraces Obama’s academic career: Obama attended kindergarten in Honululu, and moved with his family to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1967, where he attended a Catholic elementary school, St. Francis Assisi Catholic, as well as Besuki Public School, until age 11. He then returned to Honolulu, where he lived with his maternal grandparents and attended a private college preparatory school, Punahou School, until he graduated with a high school diploma. In 1979, he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, transferred to Columbia University in 1981, and graduated from that university in 1983. He later attended, and graduated from, Harvard Law School in 1991. Trump’s claims apparently center on rumors that “no one knew him” at Columbia University, fueled in part by a 2008 editorial by the Wall Street Journal (see September 11, 2008), which repeated the “finding” of a Fox News “investigation” that found 400 classmates of Obama’s had not known him at the time. Another source is Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root, who attended Columbia at the same time as Obama and says: “I think the most dangerous thing you should know about Barack Obama is that I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia” (see September 5, 2008). Obama has himself said he did little socializing at Columbia, and though he had some involvement with the Black Students Organization and participated in anti-apartheid activities, spent most of his time studying: “Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study,” he has said. “When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious. I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.” The Journal noted a May 2008 story from the Associated Press containing an interview with Obama’s former roommate, Sohale Siddiqi, who verified Obama’s claims, and in January 2009, the New York Times published an interview with another roommate from the time, Phil Boerner, who also validated Obama’s claims of being a bookish, rather solitary student. PolitiFact interviews Cathie Currie, a professor at Adelphi University, who remembers Obama occasionally playing pick-up soccer with her and a group of friends on the lawn outside the library. She says he made an impression because of his athleticism, his maturity, and his wisdom, and she assumed that he was several years older than he actually was. “My sense of it was that he was keeping a low profile,” Currie tells the PolitiFact interviewer. “We’d ask him to go out with us for beers after soccer. He seemed like he wanted to, but then he’d step back and say, ‘Sorry, I’m going to the library.’” PolitiFact lists an array of articles covering Obama’s time at Occidental and Harvard Law School, noting that “[d]ozens of former classmates and teachers from those schools have publicly shared their recollections (and photos) of Obama. Obama was the president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review journal, for goodness sake.” PolitiFact has also found “plenty” of people who remember Obama from elementary and high school, in Indonesia and Hawaii. PolitiFact concludes: “We could get deeper into this but it seems like overkill. It’s abundantly clear that there are lots and lots of former classmates who remember Obama at every level of school. It’s true that Obama’s two years at Columbia are relatively undocumented. And far fewer classmates have publicly shared recollections of Obama from that period, as opposed to other school years before and after. At Columbia, Obama was a transfer student, he lived off campus, and by his and other accounts he buried himself in his studies and didn’t socialize much. But even so, there are several students who recall Obama at Columbia. In short, media accounts and biographies are filled with on-the-record, named classmates who remember Obama. Trump is certainly right that presidential candidates are heavily scrutinized. As even a basic online search confirms, Obama’s school years were, too. Trump’s claim that people who went to school with Obama ‘never saw him, they don’t know who he is’ is ridiculous. Or, to borrow Trump’s phrase, it’s crazy.” [St. Petersburg Times, 2/10/2011; JamesJoe, 2/17/2011]

Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who has begun publicly questioning President Obama’s US citizenship (see February 10, 2011), explores the “controversy” on ABC’s morning talk show Good Morning America. In an interview conducted on his private plane, “Trump Force One,” Trump implies that Obama is lying about being born in Hawaii (see October 1, 2007, April 18, 2008, Before October 27, 2008, August 4, 2010, and February 28, 2011), says he is a “little” skeptical of Obama’s citizenship, and says the “birthers” who express their doubts about Obama should not be dismissed as “idiots” (see February 17, 2010). “Growing up no one knew him,” Trump claims. “The whole thing is very strange.” As he has in recent interviews, Trump says he is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He implies that he can buy his way into victory, saying he is willing to spend $600 million on a primary run. “I have much more than that,” he says. “That’s one of the nice things. Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put up $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.” Asked if his talk of a candidacy is anything more than a publicity stunt, he replies, “I have never been so serious as I am now.” [Politico, 3/17/2011]

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, discussing recent allegations by billionaire Donald Trump that President Obama is not a legitimate US citizen (see February 10, 2011 and March 17, 2011), tells her viewers: “Is Donald Trump a birther? Donald Trump is putting President Obama on the spot, telling him, ‘Show the birth certificate.’” Van Susteren then informs her viewers of a Trump interview on the ABC morning talk show The View where he alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public, and says: “But why is Trump doing that? Well, he tells the ladies on The View there are too many missing pieces.” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

Appearing as a guest on the Fox News morning talk show Fox and Friends, billionaire Donald Trump continues to raise questions about President Obama’s citizenship. The show hosts reference a recent interview by Trump on the ABC morning talk show The View, in which Trump alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public. After showing a clip from the interview, the hosts interview Trump about his appearance on The View. He denies View co-host Whoopi Goldberg’s statement that the continuing questions about Obama’s citizenship hinge on questions about his race, states that “anyone can get” their official birth certificate merely for the asking (see June 13, 2008 and July 1, 2009), and concludes: “I didn’t think this was such a big deal, but it’s turning out to be a very big deal.… If you weren’t born in this country, you cannot be president” (see March 2-4, 2011). Trump refuses to answer a direct question as to whether Obama was born in the United States, makes a number of unproven claims about doctors and nurses at the Honolulu hospital not remembering Obama’s birth, claims that Obama family members do not know what hospital he was born at, and casts aspersions on the birth announcements published in the Honolulu newspapers in the days after his birth (see July 2008). He repeats the claim that Obama has spent “millions of dollars” defending himself from “birther” claims, a claim that will soon be debunked (see April 7-10, 2011). He even says that Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) “should be investigated” for claiming that he remembers Obama’s birth (see December 24, 2010). Obama “could have been born outside of this country,” Trump states. [Media Matters, 3/28/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

An illustration accompanying a front-page story on the online Fox Nation blog. [Source: Media Matters]Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, promotes Donald Trump’s recent claims that President Obama is not a US citizen and may not be a Christian (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, and March 28-29, 2011). Fox Nation publishes a story with the headline “Trump on Obama: ‘Maybe He’s a Muslim.’” The story excerpts a recent interview of Trump by Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, who said Trump “hammer[ed] the birth certificate” during a recent appearance on the ABC morning talk show The View. O’Reilly says his own investigative staffers determined that two birth announcements placed in Honolulu newspapers the week of Obama’s birth proved to his satisfaction that Obama was indeed born in the US and therefore is a US citizen (see July 2008). “There couldn’t have been a sophisticated—what is he, Baby Jesus?—there was a sophisticated conspiracy to smuggle this baby back into the country? So I just dismissed it. But you made a big deal of it.” Trump explains that those announcements could have been planted by Obama supporters bent on fraud, and even claims, “I have never seen” a birth announcement in a newspaper. “Really?” O’Reilly responds. “They are common.… But why is this important to you?” Trump says that because he doubts Obama is a citizen, Obama’s status as president is doubtful. He goes on to defend “birthers” as “just really quality people that just want the truth,” and lambasts media figures who make “birthers” “afraid to talk about this subject. They are afraid to confront you or anybody about this subject.” He concludes: “People have birth certificates. He doesn’t have a birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). He may have one but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.” [Media Matters, 3/30/2011; Fox Nation, 3/30/2011] O’Reilly has been critical of the so-called “birthers” before (see July 29, 2009).

MSNBC news hosts Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd conduct a telephone interview with billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who uses the opportunity to state his belief that President Obama “was not born in this country” (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, and March 28-29, 2011). Guthrie and Todd laugh at Trump’s statement, and Todd calls Trump’s theory “an incredible conspiracy.” However, when Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, posts the video of the interview, it headlines the video, “Trump Thumps MSNBC Hosts on Obama’s Birth Certificate.” [Media Matters, 4/1/2011; Fox Nation, 4/1/2011]

Donald Trump and Meredith Vieira on NBC’s ‘Today Show.’ [Source: Slapblog (.com)]Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, reportedly considers running for president in 2012 as a Republican. Trump has made similar claims in 1988 and 2000, but those were, according to Media Bistro, “just publicity stunts.” Trump is focusing on the “birther” controversy, claims from some on the right that President Obama is not a naturally-born American citizen. Though Obama has produced his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) and satisfied constitutional requirements for proving his eligibility to serve as president, Trump and many “birthers” insist that he is actually a Kenyan citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, and April 1-8, 2011). Today, Trump takes part in contentious interviews on NBC’s Today Show, with Today co-host Meredith Vieira interviewing him; on MSNBC’s Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough; and an appearance later in the day on CNN. (On Morning Joe, former Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) tells Trump, “Get off the birther stuff.”) Time magazine media critic James Poniewozik calls the Today interview “a trifecta of self-promotion for NBC Universal. It gave a platform to the star of Celebrity Apprentice, one of NBC’s few minor hits. It gave Today a buzzed-about interview… [a]nd it helped publicize an new NBC / Wall Street Journal poll that shows Trump tied for second as a hypothetical GOP presidential candidate.” Trump tells Vieira: “Three weeks ago when I started, I thought he was probably born in this country. Right now, I have some real doubts.… I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.” Trump is combative with the somewhat acquiescent Vieira, saying he is increasingly suspicious that Obama has “conned the world” about his citizenship. Trump refuses to let Vieira refute his allegations; for example, when Vieira attempts to tell Trump about Hawaii’s policy on what birth documents it makes available (see July 1, 2009), Trump merely talks loudly over her. She lets him go unchallenged with a number of long-debunked assertions. For example, Trump asserts that Obama’s grandmother claimed to have seen Obama born in Kenya (see October 16, 2008 and After), saying: “His grandmother in Kenya said, ‘Oh no, he was born in Kenya and I was there and I witnessed the birth.’ Now, she’s on tape and I think that tape’s going to be produced fairly soon.… The grandmother in Kenya is on record saying he was born in Kenya.” Poniewozik says that claim is on a par with a recent fraudulent “birth certificate” from Kenya made available on the Internet (see August 1-4, 2009); so, Poniewozik writes, “now millions of Today viewers are invited to take it as fact.” Trump also claims to have sent his own investigators to Hawaii, who have supposedly unearthed startling evidence of Obama’s Kenyan citizenship (see April 7, 2011), but does not give any specifics. Poniewozik concludes that NBC News anchor Brian Williams is likely “mortified” by Trump’s NBC appearance, considering how Williams and NBC News have “thoroughly worked over the birther conspiracies” and found them groundless. [NBC News, 4/7/2011; Media Bistro, 4/7/2011; Time, 4/7/2011; St. Petersburg Times, 4/7/2011] Trump’s claim that Obama has spent “over $2 million” defending himself from challenges to his citizenship is quickly shown to be false (see April 7-10, 2011).

Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii’s Department of Health who has personally reviewed President Obama’s original birth certificate and pronounced it valid (see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009), calls the “birther” controversy “ludicrous.” She again pronounces the certificate valid, and denounces “conspiracy theorists” in the so-called “birther” movement for continuing to spread bogus claims about the issue (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 27-28, 2011, March 28, 2011, and April 5, 2011). “It’s kind of ludicrous at this point,” she tells an NBC interviewer. Fukino speaks in response to recent attempts by billionaire television host Donald Trump to revive the controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, and April 21, 2011). Trump has made statements on NBC and CNN saying that “nobody has any information” about Obama’s birth and “if he wasn’t born in this country, he shouldn’t be president of the United States.” Fukino says no matter who releases what, the “birthers” will continue to question Obama’s citizenship. “They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated. The whole thing is silly.” Fukino again explains the difference between the “long form” birth certificate, the Hawaiian “record of live birth” kept in state government vaults according to state law, and the “short form” certificate which is issued per an individual’s or family request (see July 1, 2009). She has twice inspected the “long form” certificate and found it true and valid, once at the request of former Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), who in October 2008 asked Fukino if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya (see October 30, 2008). Fukino insisted on inspecting the form herself, in the company of the Hawaiian official in charge of state records, found the form valid, and stated such. “It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that,” Fukino says. She notes that her then-boss, Lingle, was a supporter of Obama’s challenger, John McCain (R-AZ), and would presumably have to be in on any cover up since Fukino made her public comment at the governor’s office’s request. “Why would a Republican governor—who was stumping for the other guy—hold out on a big secret?” she asks. She notes again that the “short form” “certification of live birth” that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007 and has since been publicly released (see June 13, 2008) is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the Health Department. The “short form” was given to the Obama campaign at Obama’s request. “What he got, everybody got,” Fukino says. “He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate.” Other records, such as vital records in the Health Department’s Office of Health Status Monitoring, show that “Obama II, Barack Hussein” was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, further verifying Obama’s citizenship status. And two Honolulu newspapers announced the birth of a baby boy to Obama’s parents on that date (see July 2008). But Trump and others continue to insist that only the original “long form” record will prove Obama’s birth status. Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general’s office, says that Hawaiian state law precludes the release of “vital records” such as the “long form” birth certificate to anyone, even to the individual whose birth it records. “It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he says, nor can it be photocopied. Obama could visit the Health Department and inspect it, but could not take it or make copies. Obama requested and received the same “short form” birth certificate anyone would get upon making such a request, Wisch says. [MSNBC, 4/11/2011]

Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice and a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, tells a CNN interviewer to “stop asking me about a birth certificate,” referring to his relentless assault on President Obama’s alleged lack of US citizenship (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, and April 14-15, 2011). In a recent CNN interview, Trump said he “does not like” talking about Obama’s birth certificate (see April 10, 2011). “You have to stop asking me about a birth certificate,” he says. “You’ve got to stop asking the questions. The problem is every time I go on a show—like as an example, this morning—the first question you asked me is about the birth certificate. I think my strength is jobs, the economy, and protecting our nation from OPEC, China, and the other countries that are ripping us off.” In earlier interviews, Trump has said he is “proud” to discuss the “birther” allegations. Interviewer Ali Velshi calls the birther claims “ludicrous,” and when Trump tells him to stop asking about the birth certificate, Velshi responds: “We’ll stop asking you the questions when you stop saying that President Obama can’t prove he is born in the United States. Is that a deal?” [Politico, 4/21/2011]

Appearing on ABC’s Sunday morning talk show This Week, in an interview taped ahead of time but broadcast on Easter morning, Christian evangelist Franklin Graham gives his blessing to billionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rumored presidential aspirations, saying: “When I first saw that he was getting in, I thought, ‘Well, this has got to be a joke.’ But the more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself: ‘You know? Maybe the guy’s right.’” Graham says he agrees with Trump’s allegations that President Obama may not be an American citizen. The Charlotte Observer notes, “There was no discussion of how Graham, a conservative Christian, could support a thrice-married owner of gambling casinos.” Graham has said in recent years that Obama was “born a Muslim” and Islam is a “wicked” religion. On This Week, he questions Obama’s Christianity (see January 6-11, 2008) and refuses to say that Obama’s birth certificate is valid (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). “The president… has some issues to deal with here,” he says. “He can solve this whole birth certificate issue pretty quickly (see July 1, 2009). I was born in a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, and I know that my records are there. You can probably even go and find out what room my mother was in when I was born. I don’t know why he can’t produce that.… It’s an issue that looks like he could answer pretty quickly.” In a subsequent interview for Christianity Today, Graham backs away from his previous claims that Obama is a Muslim, saying: “I do not believe for an instant that Obama is a Muslim. He has said he’s not a Muslim. I take him at his word. People say he’s not born in the United States. I take it on the word that they properly vetted him before they swore him into office. I’m sure somebody had to look at his credentials. I’m not saying the president is a Muslim, never said he’s a Muslim. He says he’s a Christian.… I’ve never said that Obama was born a Muslim.” However, he notes, “All throughout the Muslim world, every person whose father is a Muslim is recognized under Islamic law as a Muslim.” Obama’s father was a nonpracticing Muslim. [Charlotte Observer, 4/25/2011; Christianity Today, 4/26/2011] The Charlotte Observer publishes an op-ed in response to Graham’s claims that accuses him of “spouting… nonsense” about Obama’s birth certificate and “join[ing] Trump in fostering the bizarre and false birther allegations.” [Charlotte Observer, 4/26/2011] In 2010, Graham told a CNN reporter that Obama’s “problem” was that he was “born a Muslim” (see August 19, 2010).

Responding to recent comments by evangelist Franklin Graham that questioned President Obama’s US citizenship (see April 24-25, 2011), Fox News anchor Shepard Smith tells his viewers: “Fox News can confirm that the president of the United States is a citizen of the United States. Period.” Smith refers viewers to the validated copy of Obama’s birth certificate that has been available for years (see June 13, 2008) before making the assertion that Fox confirms Obama’s US citizenship. [Media Matters, 4/25/2011; Business Insider, 4/26/2011]

The Bible Nation Society logo. [Source: Bible Nation Society / Vimeo (.com)]A group that successfully pushed for a House resolution commemmorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible is revealed to be led by a pastor who claims President Obama may be the Antichrist. House Representatives Robert Aderholt (R-AL) and Nick Rahall (D-WV) introduced a resolution expressing the House’s “gratitude” for the “influence” the King James Bible (KJV) has had on “countless families, individuals, and institutions in the United States.” The two were lobbied by the small, non-profit Bible Nation Society (BNS) of Corunna, Michigan. The BNS is led by Douglas Levesque, the pastor of Corunna’s Immanuel Baptist Church. At the organization’s 2010 Bible in Culture Conference, Levesque preached on the “Antichrist Quotient,” in which he laid out a detailed theory that stated Obama might be the Antichrist. Levesque told conference members that “God has given us a purposeful ambiguity around” the Antichrist, then proceeded to offer what he apparently believes is evidence that Obama might be the Antichrist, or is at least anti-Christian. Levesque accused Obama of “twist[ing] the word of God” and said, “the Antichrist Quotient goes up above and beyond for someone who would so blatantly attack the word of God.” He added, “This man offends me, this man offends my God.” Levesque offered a number of parallels to material from the Book of Revelation: Obama’s motorcade vehicle is jokingly nicknamed “The Beast,” the name Barack “means thunder and lightning,” and the name of Obama’s then-chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, means “lightning, God with us.” Levesque concluded: “Why doesn’t Obama answer the questions about his citizenship? Why doesn’t he answer questions about his faith? Why doesn’t he answer the questions about his bisexuality, his homosexuality, his drug use?… Because he has a mouth speaking great lying things.” Neither Aderholt nor Rahall have said if they publicly support, or repudiate, Levesque’s statements. [Religion Dispatches (.org), 4/26/2011]

New Yorker columnist David Remnick joins a number of media figures and others in proclaiming the “birther” controversy, now presumably settled by President Obama’s issuance of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), to be rooted in racism (see April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011). Remnick writes: “There is the birther fantasy; the fantasy that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father (see August 1, 2008 and After and May 7, 2010); the fantasy that the president has some other father, and not Barack Obama Sr. (see October 24, 2008 and Before October 27, 2008); the fantasy that Obama got into Harvard Law School with the help of a Saudi prince and the Nation of Islam (see July 21, 2009). There is a veritable fantasy industry at work online and in the book-publishing industry; there are dollars to be made. The cynicism of the purveyors of these fantasies is that they know very well what they are playing at, the prejudices they are fanning: that Obama is foreign, a fake, incapable of writing a book, incapable of intellectual achievement. Let’s say what is plainly true (and what the president himself is reluctant to say): these rumors, this industry of fantasy, are designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.” The only “radical” things about Barack Hussein Obama, Remnick writes, are his race and his name. “[E]ven now, more than two years after the fact, this is deeply disturbing to many people, and, at the same time, the easiest way to arouse visceral opposition to him.” Opposition to Obama based on these qualities is, Remnick writes, “a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering.” Remnick accuses billionaire television host and birther enthusiast Donald Trump of directly and deliberately involving himself in such race-bating, but, he concludes, “[t]he shame is that there are still many more around who, in the name of truth-telling, are prepared to pump the atmosphere full of poison.” [New Yorker, 4/27/2011]

Ordering

Time period

Email Updates

Receive weekly email updates summarizing what contributors have added to the History Commons database

Donate

Developing and maintaining this site is very labor intensive. If you find it useful, please give us a hand and donate what you can.Donate Now

Volunteer

If you would like to help us with this effort, please contact us. We need help with programming (Java, JDO, mysql, and xml), design, networking, and publicity. If you want to contribute information to this site, click the register link at the top of the page, and start contributing.Contact Us